Regardless of someone's personal opinion on guns, and absent of discussing guns in general, I grow wary when a government seeks to tell its population that something that they've done can no longer be done, as long as that something doesn't infringe on the rights of others.

Ahh all that conditional language and appeals to emotion independent of any hard evidence to back his claim...he'd be better suited posting here using multiple accounts to spam links to his blog!

The second amendment is a really tough issue IMO.

It was written when rifles could shoot less than a hundred yards accurately and fire less than 10 rounds per minute. Now (as seen in the Aurora, CO shooting) any man, woman, or child can shoot 800 rounds a minute. But as an American, I fuckin love my guns.

I live in the state of CommieFornia (as /gunnit loves to call it). Compared to almost any other state we have the strictest gun restrictions in the country. No short barreled rifles, nothing bigger than 10 rounds a magazine, and the biggest kicker for AR-15 models is a necessary tool to take out the magazine.

Those laws won't stop a shooter tho, just make it more difficult. Like you said, regulation related to health reasons would probably be effective. In CommieFornia, you need to take a written test to purchase a firearm in a gun store. Why not just a mental screening?

You both have such excellent points. It's clear that this debate is multifaceted and quite complex. It's no wonder it's such a point of contention

It wasn't about speed and efficiency of the weapon, it was about being able to match the speed and efficiency of the government's weapons. . . when you have a military with fully automatic high power high capacity long range weapons?

They also have drones! So what's the true point of the 2nd amendment today?

it is a truly slippery slope

Very true. I didn't really think about things like like that.

use our drones to cut the power lines.

The second amendment is a really tough issue IMO.

Not remotely. It was written as a hard stopper to a tyrannical government. The people didn't just have rifles, they had -cannons-, cannons that fired FOURTY TWO pound cannon balls.

Truth is, your fear enables them. Because if you make guns illegal, only criminals and tyrannical governments will have them.

How they treat guns is painfully unconstitutional, it's absurd how few appreciate this.

Before you get too far.... CNN would know because CNN=ISIS

Basically. http://imgur.com/a/QQuAg

I've had a gun pulled on me a few times before.

Although now that I think of it, the city I live in has very strict gun control laws, so they must have been fake guns.

Gun control is about disarming the populace, not protecting them from violence.

Extremely

Did you lose your crystal ball?

I live in the same area as OP and don't carry my gun for the same reason. I go to 3 different states within 20 minutes. I've been robbed at gun point and have my house broken into and certainly don't like idiots who think we should do away with the 2nd.

The gun control stuff is beyond stupid. Just make strawpurchases have a mandatory minimum of like 15 years.

Are the kids in Chicago and Detroit all legal gun owners? Gun laws don't stop shit.

Really makes you start to question the whole "NO ONE'S COMING FOR YOUR GUNS!!!" argument...

This is my only problem with your post. I had to listen to 8 years of fear mongering about how Obama was coming to take everyone's guns, and yet nothing.

No one is coming for your guns. Period. It's all a big lie perpetuated by a bunch of terrified people to drum up gun and ammo sales, and it works.

I would say that Obama

did not

hurt the

gun industry.

That's four separate links, all pulled from Google, but if you care to dig deeper the data is there.

To say that the Democratic party wouldn't take away all semi-automatic weapons tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it is a ridiculous notion.

That's a poor argument. I could say the same about violent people, but it doesn't meant there's a real threat.

"To say that white supremacists wouldn't kill all non-whites tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it is a ridiculous notion."

In this extreme case it's true. There's probably a bunch of people that would inflict harm on others if they thought they could get away with it, but they can't.

Guns are the same. It would be impossible to take guns away from law-abiding Americans, too, so that point is just as unrealistic.

Again, Obama increased gun ownership. People are just terrified, all the time, of everything. "I need more guns!". "Don't take my guns!".

Land of the brave, indeed.

I'm saying it's not realistic to postulate why Obama didn't take the guns.. it wasn't for any of the assumptions you listed, but rather because Americans would never allow it.

My point is that Obama was never trying to take guns. The proof is that he didn't try, and he didn't take them away.

Furthermore, gun ownership increased under Obama. While this was not his fault, it happened under his watch. Surely it was driven by people thinking that guns were to be outlawed or banned soon, but the point is that under Obama there were more guns, not less.

Not only did he not try to take guns away, the total numbers increased while he was president.

In other words, no one is coming for your guns. They weren't before, and they aren't now. It isn't going to happen, period.

Not trying to be rude either, just going back and forth ;-)

I don't doubt that there are groups of people, and organizations, that would like to ban certain types of guns, restrict ownership, implement background checks, etc. There certainly are, and some of them work tirelessly to push their agenda.

While I think common sense gun legislation can pass (ending gun shows, more background checks, etc.), I do not believe anyone will successfully ban guns, or take them away.

These things are slow changes and don't happen over night.

While I tend to agree in general, I think this issue is unique:

The 2nd amendment and the rights it enshrines are too deeply ingrained in American culture and society. We're now at a point where there are two distinct camps, with others lying somewhere on the spectrum. Guns are either a god-given right, and essential to the protection of self, or they are a scourge on society that do more harm than good.

While a few people may be persuaded to join the other side, I think the vast majority of people will not be swayed. This of course is conjecture, but based on historical precedent and the current situation I think it's a safe assumption.

I've never believed the "no one's coming for your guns" argument since a lot of people believe the 2nd Amendment was for muskets and some openly admit they want all the guns.

It is all about the hobgoblins.

Mencken is awesome. Hadn't read that one. Thanks.

People say he was ahead of his time. Perhaps, instead, time is not what we think it is.

This is a tough one. I'm all for concealed carry. And I don't think anyone should need a permit to do so. But on the other hand, state governments have their own sovereign power, and this proposed law would have the federal government stepping pretty hard on it.

Look who controls CNN and look at the agendas they have pushed; Iraq invasion, 2nd Amendment revocation, Syria invasion, 1st Amendment revocation, etc.